Pittsburgh Pirates Prospects: Tale of Two Seasons for J.C. Flowers

Struggles with Triple-A Indianapolis

Flowers spent the entire regular season pitching for Triple-A Indianapolis. The 25-year-old Flowers pitched in 30 games for the Indians this past regular season, with 3 of those 30 outings being starts. Once again, he mostly worked as a reliever.

In his 30 outings, Flowers posted a a woeful 9.39 ERA and 6.77 FIP in 46.0 innings pitched. He struggled with his control walking 16.5% of opposing batters faced, and had a career low 19.1% strikeout rate. His 1.76 HR/9 rate was also the worst of his career.

Flowers was burnt by batting average on balls in play, however. His BAbip of .410 was around 100 points higher than league average. This indicates that Flowers was burnt by some poor luck and/or defense this past season.

The BAbip indicated that there was reason to believe there were much better results to be had for Flowers. The tools are also there for Flowers. FanGraphs rates both his slider (60) and changeup (50) as above-average pitches.

Those aforementioned improved results started to show when his season began its second tale. This tale came in the Arizona Fall League.